Scott Kirsner wrote a nice summary from his notes at a recent innovation unconference in Boston. This is a very important topic and movement in Boston.

Boston has a deep history (emphasis on history) of entrepreneurship, going back to days where immigrants hustled their way to freedom and wealth. Don’t forget the early days of venture where just as important during the early ‘80s in and around New England.

After a time, though, Boston’s entrepreneurial ecosystem just seemed to fall apart. My opinion is that the Minicomputer-boom that imploded left a big crater.

Scott writes that “there is a cultural revolution happening here, and that there are two kinds of people in our region’s innovation economy:

1. People who do their jobs in isolation and continue to repeat the same old tropes about how “we don’t network enough” and “things are so different in Silicon Valley.”

2. People who are inventing new networking events, mentoring young entrepreneurs, opening doors for students, running programs to help start-ups get off to a faster start, investing in new sectors, and generally bouncing off one another in ways that create really great sparks.

In that vein, I wrote my thoughts not long ago here about the overall counterculture I believe Scott is seeing as well.

Two observations and angles from my perspective: one is around the general mindset of entrepreneurs and investors; the second is community. Both of these factors need to be aligned – any misalignment and the formula fails.

Boston is deeper entrepreneurial history – actually more than Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley overtook Boston during the PC revolution, but more importantly, Silicon Valley innovated and fostered the two angles I mentioned above. Silicon Valley simply “out innovated” Boston.

Scotts post and my views on this looming counterculture speaks to a new opportunity or level playing field.

This opportunity is in the recalibration of the early stage process. I wrote my observations from Silicon Valley here in a recent blog post.

Here’s the bottom line on venture capitalists: most are very good and some really suck. The ones that really suck give the other ones a bad name. This isn’t new news – it’s been like that a long time. However, what’s different today is that the market forces and lack of personnel in the venture community has changed the game at the zero and early stage and opened the door to new entrants – mainly outside Silicon Valley.

Boston is onto something special with this unconference (mindset) in that everything is faster at the early stage. For evidence of that, you need to simply look at the real time web, Twitter, and at the incubation centers popping up all over the United States and around the world (and not just Silicon Valley).

We’re seeing a developer boom right now and new markets are emerging. It’s a great time for startups despite that venture is still struggling. A new breed of folks who understand this world will fill the void. This major shift is a big opportunity to resurface and highlight the still current entrepreneurial action in Boston.